


state of mind

by lordberenger



Category: Captive Prince - C. S. Pacat
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-13
Updated: 2018-05-13
Packaged: 2019-05-06 09:28:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14638962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lordberenger/pseuds/lordberenger
Summary: It was right there at the top of the invitation list. No one would see it other than Auguste, Laurent, and the affected staff, but that was enough.Damianos Akielos.(or, the modern / post break-up AU no one asked for, not even me.)





	state of mind

Laurent shouldn’t have come.

He knew this the moment he stepped through the door. He took a second to be bitter about it, then he corrected himself: he had known he would spend a horrible night the moment he chose to put on a tux and climb into his car. Denial was not going to get him through the evening.

The Marlas Hall was an impressive building, allying the golden varnish of the expensive and well-conserved with the bluntness of the old. The gardens were particularly noteworthy, full of wide trees and cleverly half-hidden ruins. People raved about finding millennium-old stones in the middle of their evening strolls, but failed to realize the trees were often even older.

The gardens were tempting, yes. Laurent could smell the perfume of early-summer flowers and feel the breeze on his face through the open french doors leading out, but he refrained himself. This was a charity event thrown by his own brother: he had to socialize and charm the room into parting with a few of the superfluous zeros in their bank account.

Still, he couldn’t banish the feeling of dread pooling low in his stomach as he stepped through the room, darting furtive looks right and left. But what was the point? Was he trying to locate or avoid?

Auguste snagged him by the arm before he could finish that thought.

“Laurent,” he said with forced cheer. “I’m so glad to see you. Thank you for coming.” He squeezed Laurent’s biceps a little tighter. Laurent didn’t know who he was trying to convince. “Um, Vannes is here.”

“I hope you’re more eloquent in your speech,” Laurent said, shaking off Auguste’s almost painful grip.

“What?”

“Tell me what you have to tell me and go. You have a party to host.”

Auguste’s eyebrows drew together. “I have the right to be concerned for my little brother’s—”

“Oh, so we’re concerned, now?”

A pause. Auguste looked at him with his clear blue eyes and sighed.

“You know, don’t you?”

“The name’s hard to miss.”

It was right there at the top of the invitation list. No one would see it other than Auguste, Laurent, and the concerned staff, but that was enough.

 _Damianos Akielos_.

The name didn’t haunt Laurent. He felt unease and excessive annoyance, but he knew he could get through the evening. He didn’t have a choice. Or maybe he did: maybe Auguste would give him one, out of brotherly affection and concern, and ask him later for a favor that Laurent would be too happy to fulfill. But Laurent hadn’t made it this far in life without an iron spine and a stronger discipline: he would see the night through.

Ex or no ex present.

Who had dumped him. Or would have, had tried to, before Laurent did it first, out of pride and self-respect.

“Laurent,” Auguste started.

“I’m fine.” He was a little surprised to find it true. “I won’t talk to him, though.”

“He might want to talk to you.”

This was probably a plea to be civil. It missed its mark by a hundred feet.

“I doubt it,” Laurent said, and turned away to greet the newest arrival of guests.

He did. In securing his pride, Laurent might not have stopped to preserve Damianos’s. That was what the “I’ll never see him again” part of the plan was for.

* * *

 

Damianos didn’t enter until the gala had started in full. Laurent noticed the kind of commotion near the door that announced a new arrival: the steward drawing people forward, the customary stop on the threshold to gauge the room and let people gawk, should they need to—and it was almost always assumed that they did.

Laurent slipped behind a large group of people dressed as severe as he was and tried to will the light off his pale hair. He thought he was making a decent job at pretending to consider the paté hors d’oeuvre when Jord’s voice grunted from behind him.

“I’ll punch him back to Ios.”

Jord was much less conspicuous in his staring than Laurent, although he was wearing a simple black suit that marked him without subtlety as a bodyguard and was thus invisible to most of the people milling around.

“Please don’t,” Laurent said.

Jord grunted again. It could have meant anything from a disregard of Laurent’s words to reluctant agreement: knowing Jord, it was most likely a mix of everything in between.

Laurent took a flute from a nearby tray. “Is that apple cider or champagne?”

Jord shrugged. “Drink and find out.”

That was the method Laurent usually preferred to avoid. He took a careful sip, though, and almost recoiled when the tart taste of alcohol hit his tongue. Laurent didn’t drink: he liked neither the taste nor the effects. Tonight, though, in the shadow of Damianos's large back, the idea was more tempting than it had ever been.

“That’s not apple cider,” Jord warned next to him, as though Laurent had missed it after his first taste.

“I know.”

Jord eyed him for a moment with the easiness of a man who had seen Laurent grow up and suffered through his teenage moods. He shrugged then: Laurent was not the person he was paid to protect and he would not dare baby him, for the same reasons.

“Don’t mess up,” he called as Laurent departed, done with the insidious interrogation.

“I never do.”

Laurent chose not to hear the ugly snort behind him. He waved through the crowd, stopping to chat with couples on the look-out for recognition from the hosts and larger groups who would unanimously revel on his witty conversation once he departed.

He saw Torveld and the blonde doe-faced youth he had taken as unofficial sugar baby, and the looks exchanged with the closest server, barely older. Vannes smiled her shark grin at him from across the room. Laurent met her stare and raised his glass in salutation. He almost bumped into Ancel a minute later, and spent a longer time than he intended talking horses with Berenger.

Laurent had to give it to Ancel: though he was clearly bored and out of his depth, he found a way of holding Laurent’s gaze dead on. It would have been uncomfortable, had Laurent not spent his formative years developing and honing the same tactics.

It was almost enough. The clock was indicating well past eleven when Laurent’s eyes passed over Damianos for the first time.

It was a quick glance, accidental turned informative: Laurent noted the width of his shoulders, possibly greater than two years ago. The shine of his hair, combed and slicked back in a way that somehow tamed the curls. The dark color of his suit; almost a perfect match to Laurent’s. The thought bothered him for a moment, so he traded it for a third glass of champagne.

It was almost certainly a mistake. He found he did not care much.

Drinking meant relative immobility. He had raised the glass to his lips when Damianos turned from his conversation—who was it with him? Did it matter?—and saw him.

The look on his face was too earnest to stomach this late in the night with alcohol in his blood. Laurent held his gaze for two seconds, which were two seconds too long but did not appear that way at the time, and turned away.

The party was winding down: the charity part had been done, and now there was music from a half-hidden orchestra and some dancing. Laurent cut through the small of gatherings of people he did not have the obligation nor the will to entertain anymore and stepped outside.

The balcony was wide, closed off by a wide stone bannister with intricate carvings, and led off to the sprawling grass. Laurent took a moment to inhale deeply. The cool air was a blessing on his overheated skin; he put down the glass and folded his arms on the bannister, pressing his forehead into the stone. He didn’t know what kind of stone it even was: sandstone? Granite? Were the two even alike? He knew it wasn’t marble: he could still feel its smooth expanse under his hand and the blinding vision of it under the sun.

There he went again.

Laurent stayed close to the bannister when he took down the stairs, unsure of his own legs. He had no experience on which to base his current state on. He didn’t think he was very drunk, but the filter in his mind seemed to have a life of his own. He felt as though he would explode in words if anyone talked to him. Maybe he would keep on talking until there were no words inside his head anymore, let them pouring out until he was dry as a desert.

Maybe he was a desert: dry and cold at night, uninhabitable and hostile.

Damianos found him leaning against the remains of an old column, watching the stars unblinkingly until his head spinned and he had to close his eyes against dizziness.

“Laurent,” Damianos said after a while, after a moment spent aware of the other and their shared history. It weighted between them, like a bag full of water that kept splashing them frozen.

“Ah,” Laurent said. He opened his eyes. “Hello, Damianos.”

Something passed in Damianos’s gaze. He was probably thinking about the last time Laurent had called him his full name, before they had dated. He liked easy camaraderie and friendliness, but Laurent was not here to reassure his need to be well-liked.

“Did you know I’d come and find you?” he asked. “I didn’t know myself until I did it.”

“You’re a really bad liar.”

“You’re drunk.”

Laurent let out a silent laugh. “Does it bother you?”

“I hope it’s not because of me.”

Of course it was. Laurent turned fully toward him and crossed his arms on his chest. Damianos’s eyes were wide open and dark in the moonlight, like his clothing and his hair. He looked like a sketch on canvas, his lines suggested rather than fully drawn.

He looked like the man Laurent had left a year ago alone in his apartment, angry and crushed because he had not gotten to do the crushing himself.

“What are you going to do about it?” Laurent asked, meaning the long conversation everyone had wanted to have with him afterwards.

_Oh, Laurent, why did you break up with him?_

_I thought you guys were moving in together!_

_Laurent, he was perfect. What have you done?_

_Love is a scam. Drink?_

Damianos didn’t seem to understand him. “You’re drunk,” he repeated.

Laurent waved his hand. “Astute observation. Are you trying to make it disappear by repeating it? If you say ‘Laurent is drunk’ three times, you’ll invoke—”

He was rambling. Damianos strode forward once, breaking his pace immediately. He gained and lost his assured expression in the same breath.

“This is the first time I see you in a year,” he started, running a hand in his hair, messing it up, “and you’re drunk.”

Why did he keep saying it? Laurent had seen him with a glass in hand: he could not pretend at perfection. Laurent pushed back from the column.

“Right,” he said, not entirely sure of the next words pushing out of his mouth. “This is as predictably boring as I thought it would be. If you’ll excuse me—”

“Wait.” Damianos’s arm shot up to block Laurent before he could step around him. It was for show and they both knew it: Laurent would be able to sidestep before Damianos could make up his mind to reach for him. “Were you avoiding me?”

“No.” Laurent made a dismissive gesture. “You don’t avoid a fly.”

“Is that what I am to you? Something to swat away?”

Laurent wanted to say _yes, you are. Get out of my way_. He wanted to say, _no, because I’ve never felt this lost than this past year_. His mouth felt full of cardboard.

“Damianos,” he started, focusing on the lapel of his jacket, rather than the strong chest under it or the face above his own, earnest and true when it was not bearable to be. “Damen.”

The look on Damen’s face changed with that word: in a flash, he was still the slightly arrogant young man who had swept Laurent off his feet even though he had felt nailed to the ground.

“I—” Laurent said, and then his phone rang.

They looked down at the same time. Laurent let out a little disbelieving laugh. Damen said “Your phone” like it was an incantation.

It was Auguste. It stopped ringing right when Laurent tapped to accept the call, then started again almost immediately.

Auguste wasn’t an anxious caller. There had to be a problem.

“Then you should go,” Damen said, and Laurent realized he’d said it out loud.

“Yes,” he said and picked up.

Damen turned away first, stepping aside to let Laurent go back toward the building.

Laurent went without turning back, trying not to hear the singular sound of his steps on gravel. He didn’t want to think about Damen’s solitary figure next to the white stone, half cast in the shadows like an echo of the past.

He did anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> @[lordberenger](http://lordberenger.tumblr.com)
> 
> I might continue this in the future, if you guys are interested? I don't know yet.


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